Jenji Kohan

Kohan has three children. The oldest was her son Charlie, who died in a skiing accident on December 31, 2019; the middle child is her daughter Eliza, and the youngest is her son Oscar. They live in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Kohan and her family are practicing Jews of the Reform denomination.

Kohan grew up in Beverly Hills, California and graduated from Beverly Hills High School, in 1987. She first attended Brandeis University, then transferred to Columbia University as a sophomore, where she graduated, with a degree in English language and literature, in 1991.

Jenji Leslie Kohan (born July 5, 1969) is an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On....

Kohan's paternal grandparents were Charles Kohan, who was born in Romania in 1902, and May E. Charles, who was born in New York City, to parents from Russia. The two knew each other from childhood and grew up in a New York City settlement house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.